inevitably brought one important factor into the homesteaders' lives.
They inaugurated some form of social life, and with the exchange of
visits, the impromptu parties, the informal gatherings, and the
politeness, the amenities they demanded--however modified to meet
frontier conditions--civilization came to stay.

The instinct of women to build up the forms of social life is
deep-rooted and historically sound. Out of the forms grow traditions,
and from the traditions grow permanency, which is woman's only
protection. With the first conscious development of social life on the
Brule, the Strip took on a more settled air.

Meanwhile, out of the back-breaking labor the first results began to
appear. The sodbreakers were going to have a crop. And hay--hay to feed
their livestock and to sell. Everyone passing through the Strip stopped
to look at the many small fields and a few large ones dotting the
prairie. People came from other parts of the frontier to see the rapid
development which the Brule had made.

"Mein Gott in Himmel!" shouted old Mr. Husmann, pointing to a field of
oats. "Look at them oats. We get one hell of a crop for raw land."

On the other side of us, Chris Christopherson's big field of flax was in
full bloom, like a blue flower garden.

"I come by Ioway," Mr. Husmann went on, "when she was a raw country, and
I say, 'Mein Gott, what grass!' But I see no grass so high and rich like
this."

The gardens matured late, as all growth on the western prairie does. The
seed which was sown on the sod so unusually late that year never would
have come up but for the soaking rains. Now there were lettuce,
radishes, onions and other things. One could not buy fresh green
vegetables anywhere in the homestead country, and they were like manna
from Heaven. It had been almost a year since Ida Mary and I had tasted
green foods. It is a curious paradox that people living on the land
depended for food or canned goods from the cities, and that the fresh
milk and cream and green vegetables associated with farm life were
unattainable.

Most of the settlers lived principally on beans and potatoes with some
dried fruits, but we had bought canned fruits, oranges and apples,
pretending to ourselves that we would stock them for the store. Some of
the settlers could buy such foods in small quantities, for they had a
little money that first summer; but the Indians were our main customers
for the more expensive things, buying anythi